Eclipse
Eclipse is a sect of rogue espers founded out of a schismatic current in the Order of the Silver Moon, most likely by one of its Disgraced members, somewhere in the 29th or 30th century. Small, cell-based and relatively unknown to the galaxy at large, Eclipse nonetheless has amongst those who know of its existence gathered a reputation of some infamy for its tenets, or rather the lack thereof. Eclipse has no psionic ontology of its own, explicitly rejecting the trappings of belief, ritual and tradition in favor of a passion-driven need for individual self-empowerment. Acolytes of the sect will copy psionic techniques from a myriad schools, orders and organizations and adapt them to their own needs without regard for the system in which they are usually embedded, leading to a patchwork dogma that makes no sense as a philosophical system but is undoubtedly effective as a means of advancement of individual abilities. These abilities are then steeled by recklessly entering perilous circumstances where acolytes are free to embrace the primal emotions that fuel their battle-fury. Eclipse holds that those life-and-death situations where life hangs by the thread of one's metafaculties are the only moments a creature is truly alive, and the only moments worth living for. Eclipse : "Thrill junkies on a power trip." As a result of its dogma Eclipse is not a large organization, because its members tend to perish abruptly and violently in action. At no time during its existence did the sect ever include more than one hundred individuals, organized in a clandestine cell structure operating in semiautonomous groups of two to five acolytes. This and the passion-driven, inhibition-free nature of its acolytes have made it very difficult for external agents to penetrate the sect without being found out or subverted. What's more, individual cells rarely have more in common than the drive for power and conflict shared by all of Eclipse; some cells are violent and thrive in situations full of fear, anger and pain, whereas others fight for moral purposes. This antitheticality and the inherent appreciation of conflict means that internecine conflict is common. It and the quest for power inherent to Eclipse also means that acolytes range wide and far across the galaxy, and have come in contact with many different psionic traditions and organizations. There are some indiciations of ties between Eclipse cells and the Order of the Black Star, as certain fighting techniques previously thought unique to agents of the Black Star have been observed to have been adopted by Eclipse acolytes. On the contrary the Silver Moon continues to shun Eclipse as apostate, and the sect likewise shares a bitter, centuries-long conflict with the Ebon Blade whose tradition of abduction and coercion strikes even the most violent and unrestrained acolytes as a crude perversion. Though the sect was most likely founded by Dorei it has never cared for matters of race or sex. Its ranks are filled with humans and aliens from a wide variety of backgrounds that range from renegade Imperial psykers and former Centralist bureaucrats to Pfhor cabalists and even mutinous Ladies of the Ebon Blade. The only thing that unifies these disparate individuals is the quest for occult power and the drive to employ it to dominate one's foes. Many acolytes perish after picking their battles unwisely but those who don't, those who survive for prolonged periods of time, are formidable opponents indeed. Category:ESPer Orders